1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to distributed computing environments. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus that facilitate a global timeout in a distributed computing environment.
2. Related Art
Computer applications within modem Enterprise computing systems are typically distributed across many application servers within the Enterprise with individual application servers hosting one or more applications. A user can access these applications across a network such as the Internet.
System designers have implemented many enhancements to these distributed computing environments to create a seamless integration of the various applications such as e-mail, task-lists, calendars, and the like. One such enhancement is a single sign-on for the distributed computing environment.
A single sign-on environment allows a user access to ‘partner’ applications across the distributed computing environment after authenticating once with a single sign-on server. These partner applications are ordinary computer applications, which have been grouped together by administrators of the distributed computing environment for the purpose of allowing the user to access them through the single sign-on server.
One problem in using a single sign-on server is that the individual applications implement their own application inactivity timers. This can lead to an application “timing-out” even though the user is active in another partner application. If the user subsequently wants to switch to the “timed-out” application, the user is redirected to the single sign-on server to be reauthenticated. Redirecting the user to the single sign-on server when the user has been active in a partner application creates a poor user experience because the partner applications do not exhibit a cohesive view to the user. If the user is currently accessing any of the partner applications, the user should have current access to all of the partner applications.
What is needed is a method and an apparatus that facilitates a single sign-on environment for partner applications in a distributed computing environment, which does not exhibit the drawbacks described above.